Put Your "Service" Horror Stories Here...

[Elspode]

I'm sure we all have stuff like this happen every day. Here's my tale from this morning, which I quote from my letter to the editor of the Kansas City Star (I seem to have uncanny luck getting my stuff put into the paper...we'll see if this one makes the grade).

"I think I may have just experienced a prime example of why the US is losing its edge in the world economy. The recent merger of SBC and ATT has made many headlines and brought a new avalanche of advertising to our televisions, but has it really improved anything?

I've just spent over a half hour trying to gather information in order to secure a dialup Internet service for my disabled son. He is already a SBC phone customer, so I figured that it would be a simple matter to add a dialup service to his existing account. Wrong. My first attempt went through a so-called customer service number from the SBC/ATT website. After plowing through two separate series of voice prompts, each asking for virtually the same information, I ended up with a message which said, "I'm sorry, but we cannot take your call right now. Please call again later", and then I was disconnected. Nice touch.

Undeterred, I searched online a bit further, and found a customer service number for ATT. I again encountered the same sort of voice menus, but I managed to make my way to a live person rather quickly. I told her what I needed, and she was very pleasant. She offered to connect me to the appropriate SBC department (after a five minute hold while she presumably figured out who I would need to talk to). Her first attempt resulted in me encountering the same exact voice menu which had resulted in my first hangup. She had remained on the line with me, to her credit, and so I told her that this avenue had previously failed. She then asked me to wait while she tried another contact possibility...and I was again disconnected.

I had foolishly thought that I could easily find a way to spend more money with ATT/SBC, but I couldn't have been more wrong. I wonder if ATT/SBC wouldn't be better served by spending more money on actually providing a means to purchase their services, and less on enticing people to make the attempt in vain?"